Okay, after about two and a half days of marathon building, I finally managed to get a few things done. I wanted to get even more done but sometimes it felt like I was going two steps forward and one step back. That was still moving forward at least; not as much as I wanted, but I still moved forward.
First off, this will be a short update since most of the progress resulted in some completed models. In fact, I completed three aircraft and three armor. Feel free to check them out in their respective Forums.
And now, on to everything I've gotten done.
On my aircraft, I finally finished up my F-86 Sabre and set it on it's wheels. It promptly fell back on it's tail, despite my having added weight to the nose. So, I cut off the nose to add some more weight to it, both in the intake as well as the space above the intake:
After that was done, I replaced the nose and touched it up again and called it done.
Next, I applied the decals to the Gloster Meteor. They look bad because they are the original Frog decals in this kit. I had no others to put on this so I just used them. They actually went on fairly well to my surprise. I didn't have nearly as many issues with them as I thought I would:
Later I recoated this with another clearcoat, installed the landing gear and gear doors and set it aside as finished.
Finally, I pulled out the Aardvark and started on the landing gear for it:
After getting them installed, I did some final touchups and then called it done.
Next, my armor....
I had some serious issues here to take care of. On my British Forlite Staff Car, I had some gaps to fill in and so I added some Mr. Surfacer 500 to it. I put it on thick to account for shrinkage:
Next I sanded it smooth and then added a new basecoat to it. Once that dried, I clearcoated it for decals:
Once that was dry, I added the decals and dullcoated this before setting it aside to dry:
Once dry, I added the wheels and did some minor touchups to this. That completed this one.
I also added the wheels to the L-39 bus, and dullcoated and weathered it to call it done.
Finally, I found the glazing for the Strassenzepp bus so I was able to add the windows to it:
Now I could finally close this up! So, I put the top on the bottom and found a huge gap above the fenders that shouldn't be there:
Fortunately, I hadn't glued it in so I pulled it off; cut off the fenders from the chassis, and added some strip styrene to them to raise them higher to meet the bus body:
Lo and behold, it worked! I did have to glue the bottom a little tighter than usual to make them match better, (thus the clamp) but it worked like I wanted it to. There is still a tiny gap there but it is within my tolerance levels:
I have given up making this an "award-winning" model after I couldn't get the paint to behave; I can accept that small amount of gap. It would take far too much effort and damaging work to try and close it up further.
So, now that I got it closed up, I finished up by painting the front end. There is supposed to be a decal that goes above the windshield, but it got messed up and unusable, so I left it off. Now it is complete.
Okay, you've seen the work I did to these, now feel free to check them out in their respective Forums.
Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.
